An Underground Scene, With Great Acoustics

By

Sophia Hollander

Updated Nov. 23, 2010 12:01 a.m. ET

On a recent afternoon, Cary Brothers lowered his guitar and surveyed the subway station stretching out before him. The small audience that had just watched him play dispersed back into the stream of commuters.

"That was weird," he said with a grin.

ENLARGE

Matthew Pelosi (left, with camera), Thomas McAulay (right) and Sam Spar (with microphone) record Cary Brothers (center, with guitar) and his band for the Subway Sessions web series.
Philip Montgomery for The Wall Street Journal

The previous night, Mr. Brothers had performed at Webster Hall as part of a 15-city tour. Now he and three band members were standing inside the Bryant Park station in the middle of a very different kind of set. They had agreed to spend their off-day playing three songs in the subway, having hastily hashed out acoustic arrangements in their hotel an hour earlier.

The performance was part of a burgeoning web series called Subway Sessions (subwaysessions.com), initiated this summer by three seniors at Hofstra University. It films professional musicians as they perform at subway stations across the city and then posts the videos on the internet.

The students—Sam Spar, 21, Matthew Pelosi, 22, and Thomas McAulay, 21—hatched the idea last year while living together. The three music lovers were disillusioned with the heavily produced quality of modern radio.

"We wanted to showcase musicians doing what they do where there's no possible way to produce it," Ms. Spar said. "It's just them playing their instruments."

The result is the ultimate in acoustic performance—just voices and instruments and the rumbling of the subway. The shows evoke similar web-based series abroad, such as the Black Cab Sessions in London and the Take Away Shows at La Blogotheque in France, which also offer austere live-music sessions with popular bands.

"It's such a different thing from the standard thing of plugging in and rocking out," said Mr. Brothers's guitarist, J.P. Hoekstra. "There's a good honesty in doing this. We know it's the bare essential of playing music—just small, intimate, a lot of vocals."

So far, eight acts have participated in the series, performing for free as the students' friends and former teachers help with the filming (some of it on iPhones). In addition to Mr. Brothers, participants have included Damian Kulash from punk band OK Go and Patrick Park, whose songs have been featured in television shows like "The O.C." The students have a wish list of bands to land—Matt and Kim, Ryan Adams and Radiohead all came up in conversation.

But with the series still in its infant stages, Mr. Brothers's session demonstrated some of the potential pitfalls—such as the lack of cell phone reception underground. Before the first note was played, Ms. Spar and her partners spent close to half an hour hunting for Mr. Brothers through the corridors of the Bryant Park station, dashing upstairs several times to make calls. As some searched for the musicians, others scouted locations, warily eyeing police officers in the station. Though performing and filming is legal under certain conditions, the students said they have been asked to move shoots several times.

The bands, though, have welcomed the chance to engage in guerilla music-making.

"It's a little rock 'n' roll, a little punk rock," said Mr. Brothers, smiling as he lugged his guitar from one shooting location to another. "I hope I don't get booed."

The band trekked through the dim labyrinth of tunnels, blending into the rush of commuters until they found a corner on a deserted mezzanine level and set up their instruments.

In the improvised setting, a guitar case became an impromptu drum. Fragments of harmonies rippled through the empty space as the group warmed up, leading to full-throated versions of songs from Mr. Brothers's new album, "Under Control." The roar of subways, blare of station announcements and occasional cheering by passersby provided an unusual downbeat.

"I grab the subway all the time and it's always good to hear new musicians starting off," said Lex Aquir, 30, from Queens, who stopped to watch. When informed that these musicians had actually performed the previous night at Webster Hall, he uttered an unprintable exclamation of admiration.

"It's a pretty good way to get a new, weird audience," Mr. Brothers, who is based in Nashville, said afterward. "It's funny seeing the looks on peoples' faces as they go by just wondering, 'What the hell is happening in my subway?' It really was one of the most fun times I've had on this tour."

Other installments in the series have inspired more audience participation. During a performance by the Brooklyn-based trio Pearl and the Beard, band members recalled, a man sprang forward and started dancing with them. Another drummed out a beat on a nearby glass partition.

"These were strangers. We still don't know their names, but they're in the video," said band member Jocelyn Mackenzie.

Pearl and the Beard were familiar with subway performances; they had busked as a group earlier in their career.

"The first time I was jobless and was literally using that money to buy myself sandwiches," laughed guitarist and singer Jeremy Styles. "It was good to do that again and not need the money."

This time, as Pearl and the Beard joyfully belted their song "Reverend Pants," with its rolling beat and lilting harmonies, to a growing crowd on the platform, Ms. Spar and her cohorts darted around with cameras and audio equipment. Commuters missed their trains to stay and listen, unsure what was happening—only that it was a New York moment not to be missed.

"When musicians start playing and everybody in the station starts to get quiet, that's really where you feel like you're creating something," Mr. McAulay said. "You're creating a whole experience for the station—you're not just creating that video."

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